


hello, welcome home

by kontent



Series: June 2019 [14]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Magic, Gen, Night Terrors, Post-Canon, Post-War, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 02:33:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kontent/pseuds/kontent
Summary: The nights are darker after the war - there is no peaceful quiet within these walls. Instead, there are screams echoing down the halls, both old and new. Hoarse voices bounce off the walls, and more often than not the Great Hall is filled with students that are not ready to go to sleep again.





	hello, welcome home

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a line from _lovely_ by Billie Eilish & Khalid.  
> 

oh, I hope someday I'll make it out of here

even if it takes all night or a hundred years

**billie eilish & khalid, ** **_lovely_ **

 

The nights are darker after the war. It’s not something anyone talks about, but they feel it. The nights are darker and longer - and when night falls over Hogwarts, it doesn’t calm down as it did before.

Hogwarts doesn’t have younger students anymore. Everybody who wanted to return was allowed to, but there are no new students - Beauxbatons and Durmstrang offered to take them, and McGonagall accepted readily. Some of the parents, some of the students doubted her, but now, after wandering the halls again, they know why - there is no peaceful quiet within these walls. Instead, there are screams echoing down the halls, both old and new. Hoarse voices bounce off the walls, and more often than not the Great Hall is filled with students that are not ready to go to sleep again.

The students don’t talk about it. Most of the now eight years returned, to finish the year they had missed by fighting a war. Sixth and fifth years have returned as well, but the younger students have been pulled out by their parents. Nobody blames them.

There is magic lingering in every corner - but it’s not kind, it’s cruel and twisted, the castle poisoned down to its core. The shadows twist, stretch their fingers along the walls. The stone crumbles under the force of the dark magic seeping into it, spidery cracks growing along some walls. Some of the portraits are empty, the edges of the canvas crumbling away day by day. 

Nobody asks the Slytherins to go back into the dungeons. The walls are weeping down there - magic pouring in waves of them, sticky and suffocating. It leaves some of the teachers shaking with fear. 

The students vote to abandon houses. Within the week, every single piece that tells a story of pride for a house is collected and burnt in The Great Hall. The fire roars for days, eating away at silver and gold and blue and red and green and yellow and black and white. 

Hogwarts accepts the offering - the Great Hall always smells like bonfires now, and no longer like burnt flesh. It still tastes like ash on some days. 

The flower around Hogwarts bloom all wrong. The tulips are streaked black and grey, and the roses fall apart before they are in full bloom. Poisonous ivy climbs up the former blue tower, and the leaves are too bright, gleaming in the sunlight like the killing curse.

Some of the moving stairs have frozen in the strangest positions. The teachers try to move them, but the castle refuses them. They decide they might as well leave the stairs be.

There are doors that no longer open. Some lead to other rooms, sending the student across the entire castle by stepping over the threshold. 

Hogwarts is filled with broken things, things that refuse to be fixed. There are doors that are torched every morning, even though they have been restored just yesterday, mirrors that only show the dead, brooms that will sweep the floor without anyone enchanting them to do it. There are ghosts lingering around every corner, but more linger in the empty corners. 

There is no longer a class for Defences Against The Dark Arts.

Scars mar the castle, carved into stone and wood, mirrored by the students wandering the halls. Nobody’s skin is untouched - red burns, silver slashes, blue lines spidering under skin. Black ink. White teeth marks. 

Hogwarts doesn’t fall apart - the walls ache and groan and tremble, but they do not crumble. They stand, their past written onto them by magic too powerful to be undone. The darkness lingers, breathes, changes, clings to the castle like the people returning every year. Many, many years later, red roses grow out of the green dungeons, with thorns so sharp they can kill and petals soft enough to make the returned weep.


End file.
